OLGA I
I've known many people from Matamoros and the vast majority of them have gruesome stories to tell of family members and friends being murdered, raped and robbed. I go to Matamoros regularly to collect my meds. Within my restricted movements, I feel safe, but I know that danger lurks on the periphery and in one unguarded moment I genuinely believe that my life could end tragically.
Nobody epitomizes this terrible fate more than Olga. She is a waitress who works 12 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, to make a better life for herself and her three children. She is a single mother. She is 35 and desirable. The cartel murdered her first husband, her second husband abandoned her for another woman and her third husband died of cancer. Despite all the calamities, she is upbeat.
It's a wonder she smiles at all.
Ten years ago she owned a small restaurant that earned a sterling reputation via word of mouth. It wasn't long before thugs appeared at her business and demanded a payment or they would burn down the building. She paid. Before long, they wanted more and then more and more. Finally, she put her foot down and told them they wouldn't receive a centavo more from her.
A few days later she was driving with her two young children when a car stopped perpendicularly to her and several men with covered heads scrambled out of their vehicle, yanked her from her seat and sped away with her. They took her to a warehouse where other kidnapped victims, both males and females, were bound to chairs and blindfolded.
For the next week, along with her fellow prisoners, she was raped, sodomized and beaten. She was never freed from her chair except when she was sexually brutalized. She survived on crackers and water. She sat in her own urine and excrement. She heard the screams of tortured individuals. Occasionally freed from her blindfold, she observed the woman next to her naked and covered in blood.
There were two shifts that guarded the victims. They would play cards, snort cocaine, drink and abuse their prisoners whenever the urge moved them. A vat of acid provided these assassins with their entertainment. They would grab a person and force him to put his feet or hands into the cauldron. The waitress says that she can still hear their screams in her head.
She had no doubt that she was destined to die as the abuse continued unabatedly, but her family knew the right people and after a week of this living hell she was freed. Once released, she moved to Brownsville and has never returned to Matamoros. She recently purchased an acre in the country near Harlingen where she is going to move her trailer in the next few weeks. She views the future optimistically, but that future will never include crossing the bridge to Matamoros.
A few years ago I was sitting in a restaurant by the plaza when three men stormed into the place and beat the holy shit out of a man eating his lunch. In less than 30 seconds they had collected their pound of flesh and quickly exited. By the time the police arrived, calm had returned to the establishment.
The section where the fight had taken place had been cleaned. A middle-aged man lay back against his chair and had a napkin pressed against his nose to stop the bleeding. A woman sitting next to him was holding a cloth containing ice against an eye that had nearly shut. She was sobbing. He was breathing deeply. I just shook my head. It's all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I've known many people from Matamoros and the vast majority of them have gruesome stories to tell of family members and friends being murdered, raped and robbed.
I know a waitress who works 12 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, to make a better life for herself and her three children. She is a single mother. She is 35 and attractive.
The cartel murdered her first husband, her second husband abandoned her for another woman and her third husband died of cancer. Despite all the calamities, she is always gracious and smiling.
It's a wonder she smiles at all.
Ten years ago she owned a small restaurant that earned a sterling reputation via word of mouth. It wasn't long before thugs appeared at her business and demanded a payment or they would burn down the building.
She paid.
Before long, they wanted more and then more and more. Finally, she put her foot down and told them they wouldn't receive a centavo more from her.
A few days later she was driving with her two young children when a car stopped perpendicularly to her and several men with covered heads scrambled out of their vehicle, yanked her out of her seat and sped away with her.
They took her to a warehouse where other kidnapped victims, both males and females, were bound to chairs and blindfolded.
For the next week, along with her fellow prisoners, she was raped, sodomized and beaten. She was never freed from her chair except when she was sexually brutalized. She survived on crackers and water. She sat in her own urine and excrement.
She heard the screams of tortured individuals. Occasionally freed from her blindfold, she observed the woman next to her naked and covered in blood.
There were two shifts that guarded the victims. They would play cards, snort cocaine, drink and abuse their prisoners whenever the urge moved them.
A vat of acid provided these assassins with their entertainment. They would grab a person and force him to put his feet or hands into the cauldron. The waitress says that she can still hear their screams in her head.
She had no doubt that she was destined to die as the abuse continued unabatedly, but her family knew the right people and after a week of this living hell she was freed.
Once released, she moved to Brownsville and has never returned to Matamoros. She recently purchased an acre in the country near La Feria where she is going to move her trailer in the next few weeks. She views the future optimistically, but that future will never include crossing the bridge to Matamoros.
A few years ago I was sitting in a restaurant near the plaza when three men stormed into the place and beat the holy shit out of a man eating his lunch. In less than 30 seconds they had collected their pound of flesh and quickly exited.
By the time the police arrived, calm had returned to the establishment. The section where the fight had taken place had been cleared.
A middle-aged man lay back against his chair and had a napkin pressed against his nose to stop the bleeding. A woman sitting next to him was holding a cloth containing ice against an eye that had nearly shut. She was sobbing. He was breathing deeply.
I just shook my head. It's all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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